The Last Photo

This is the last photo that I ever took of my sweet, wonderful Mina Bean. Why didn’t I take more pictures of Mina after that date? Because Mina started to look very ill and frail right about that time and that’s not how I want to remember her once I’m able to remember her past the end of her life. I took it on October 28 as she was drinking from her water bowl. Mina always drank from the “back” of the bowl, nearest the wall, and that caused her muzzle hair to dip into the water. When she raised her head her muzzle would drip with the water and she created this constant wet zone around her bowls and onto the carpet. I tried about a zillion things over the years to keep the water puddles under control, but nothing really worked that well.

The last photo of Mina that I ever took - 10.28.09

When Mina was a puppy, we discovered her ability to blow bubbles in her water bowl. I’m not kidding, she used her nose to exhale air into her water bowl and create bubbles and a watery mess all over the floor. My sister and I discovered this by accident one evening while sitting at the dinner table, I think. We’d been wondering how Mina created a pool of water around her dishes lately when we heard this odd sound coming from the kitchen. We quietly peered around the corner and saw Miss Mina gleefully blowing the water with her nose!

We laughed quite a bit. Mina has a good sense of humor so whenever she makes you laugh, she keeps doing the behavior until she gets so excited that she just has to jump and play. She didn’t blow bubbles ever again after she got a few months older, but it’s one of my favorite memories of her brief puppyhood.

Another wet activity that Mina enjoys is raspberries. Oh yeah, she likes me to blow raspberries at her face so she can frantically lick my lips while I’m making the raspberry noise. It’s big fun for Mina and it makes us both laugh and laugh. Mina enjoyed this activity right up until the end of her life.

But, being a proper terrier, Mina was never one to jump into bodies of water if more than her feet were going to get wet. She would avoid puddles, if possible, after strong rains and was never once tempted to get into my Dad’s swimming pool. She hated baths but she tolerated them for my sake. I didn’t bathe Mina more than about four times per year and that was typically done by a professional groomer. We had to start giving her somewhat regular baths in the Malaseb shampoo during chemo because of all her skin problems, and then there were the three infamous lime-sulfur dips that cured her sarcoptic mange. Other than those times, I was happy with Mina’s particular smell – it was Mina, after all! I wish I could smell it ever day but it’s faded so much that I only notice it when I’ve left the windows open on a rainy day. My Dad says that will fade quickly, and it makes me so very sad.